door when, coming from the bed-room, a muffled sound of speechreached his ear.

One voice was Alice's: the other--his breath stopped. It was not themaid's. He knew it well. It was the voice of Fritz von Ehrenberg.

It was over then--for him.... And again and again he murmured: "It'sall over."

He leaned weakly against the wall.

Then he listened.

This woman who could not yield with sufficient fervour to the abandonof passionate speech and action--this was Alice, his Alice, with herfine sobriety, her philosophic clearness of mind.

And that young fool whose mouth she closed with long kisses ofgratitude for his folly--did he realise the blessedness which hadfallen to the lot of his crude youth? It was over ... all over.

And he was so worn, so passionless, so autumnal of soul, that he couldsmile wearily in the midst of his pain.

Very carefully he descended the creaking stairs, locked the door ofthe house and stood on the street--still smiling.

It was over ... all over.

Her future was trodden into the mire, hers and his own.

And in this supreme moment he grew cruelly aware of his crimes againsther.

All her love, all her being during these years had been but one secretprayer: "Hold me, do not break me, do not desert me!"

He had been deaf. He had given her a stone for bread, irony for love,cold doubt for warm, human trust! And in the end he had even despisedher because she had striven, with touching faith, to form herselfaccording to his example.

It was all fatally clear--now.

Her contradictions, her lack of feeling, her haughty scepticism--allthat had chilled and estranged him had been but a dutiful reflectionof his own being.

Need he be surprised that the last remnant of her lost and corruptedyouth rose in impassioned rebellion against him and, thinking tosave itself, hurled itself to destruction?

He gave one farewell glance to the dark, silent house--the grave ofthe fairest hopes of all his life. Then he set out upon long, dreary,aimless wandering through the endless, nocturnal streets.

Like shadows the shapes of night glided by him.

Shy harlots--loud roysterers--benzin flames--more harlots--and hereand there one lost in thought even as he.

An evil odour, as of singed horses' hoofs, floated over the city.....The dust whirled under the street-cleaning machines.

The world grew silent. He was left almost alone.....

Then the life of the awakening day began to stir. A sleepy dawn creptover the roofs....

It was the next morning.

There would be no "next mornings" for him. That was over.

Let others send Indian lilies!

THE PURPOSE

Chapter I.

It was a blazing afternoon, late in July. The Cheruskan fraternityentered Ellerntal in celebration of their mid-summer festivity. Theyhad let the great wagon stand at the outskirts of the village and nowmarched up its street in well-formed procession, proud and vain as acompany of _Schützen_ before whom all the world bows down once a year.

First came the regimental band of the nearest garrison, dressed incivilian's clothes--then, under the vigilance of two brightly attiredfreshmen, the blue, white and golden banner of the fraternity, nextthe officers accompanied by other freshmen, and finally the activemembers in whom the dignity, decency and fighting strength of thefraternity were embodied. A gay little crowd of elderly gentlemen,ladies and guests followed in less rigid order. Last came, as alwaysand everywhere, the barefoot children of the village. The processioncame to a halt in front of the _Prussian Eagle_, a long-drawn singlestory structure of frame. The newly added dance hall with its threegreat windows protruded loftily above the house.

The banner was lowered, the horns of the band gave wild, sharp signalsto which no one attended, and Pastor Rhode, a sedate man of fiftydressed in the scarf and slashed cap of the order, stepped from theinn door to pronounce the address of welcome. At this moment ithappened that one of the two banner bearers who had stood at the rightand left of the flag with naked foils, rigid as statues, slowly tiltedover forward and buried his face in the green sward.

This event naturally put an immediate end to the ceremony. Everybody,men and women, thronged around the fallen youth and were quicklypushed back by the medical fraternity men who were present in variousstages of professional development.

The medical wisdom of this many-headed council culminated in the cry:"A glass of water!"

Immediately a young girl--hot-eyed and loose-haired, exquisite in theroundedness of half maturity--rushed out of the door and handed aglass to the gentlemen who had turned the fainting lad on hisback and were loosening scarf and collar.

He lay there, in the traditional garb of the fraternity, like a youngcavalry man of the time of the Great Elector--with his blue,gold-braided doublet, close-fitting breeches of white leather andmighty boots whose flapping tops swelled out over his firm thighs. Hecouldn't be above eighteen or nineteen, long and broad though he was,with his cheeks of milk and blood, that showed no sign of down, noduelling scar. You would have thought him some mother's pet, had therenot been a sharp line of care that ran mournfully from the half-openlips to the chin.

The cold water did its duty. Sighing, the lad opened his eyes--twopretty blue boy's eyes, long lashed and yet a little empty ofexpression as though life had delayed giving them the harder glowof maturity.

These eyes fell upon the young girl who stood there, with handspressed to her heaving bosom, in an ecstatic desire to help.

"Where can we carry him?" asked one of the physicians.

"Into my room," she cried, "I'll show you the way."

Eight strong hands took hold and two minutes later the boy lay on theflowered cover of her bed. It was far too short for him, but it stood,soft and comfortable, hidden by white mull curtains in a corner ofher simple room.

He was summoned back to full consciousness, tapped, auscultated andexamined. Finally he confessed with a good deal of hesitation that hisright foot hurt him a bit--that was all.

"Are the boots your own, freshie?" asked one of the physicians.

He blushed, turned his gaze to the wall and shook his head.

Everyone smiled.

"Well, then, off with the wretched thing."

But all exertion of virile strength was in vain. The boot did notbudge. Only a low moan of suffering came from the patient.

"There's nothing to be done," said one, "little miss, let's have abread-knife."

Anxious and with half-folded hands she had stood behind the doctors.Now she rushed off and brought the desired implement.

"But you're not going to hurt him?" she asked with big, beseechingeyes.

"No, no, we're only going to cut his leg off," jested one of theby-standers and took the knife from her clinging fingers.

Two incisions, two rents along the shin--the leather parted. A steadysurgeon's hand guided the knife carefully over the instep. At last the flesh appeared--bloody, steel-blue and badly swollen.

"Freshie, you idiot, you might have killed yourself," said the surgeonand gave the patient a paternal nudge. "And now, little miss,hurry--sugar of lead bandages till evening."

Chapter II.

Her name was Antonie. She was the inn-keeper Wiesner's only daughterand managed the household and kitchen because her mother had died inthe previous year.

His name was Robert Messerschmidt. He was a physician's son and astudent of medicine. He hoped to fight his way into full fraternitymembership by the beginning of the next semester. This last detailwas, at present, the most important of his life and had been confidedto her at the very beginning of their acquaintanceship.

Youth is in a hurry. At four o'clock their hands were intertwined. Atfive o'clock their lips found each other. From six on the bandageswere changed more rarely. Instead they exchanged vows of eternalfidelity. At eight a solemn betrothal took place. And when, at teno'clock, swaying slightly and mellow of mood, the physiciansreappeared in order to put the patient to bed properly, theirwedding-day had been definitely set for the fifth anniversary of thatday. Next morning the procession went on to celebrate in some otherpicturesque locality the festival of the breakfast of "themorning after."

Toni had run up on the hill which ascended, behind her father's house,toward the high plateau of the river-bank. With dry but burning eyesshe looked after the wagons which gradually vanished in the silverysand of the road and one of which carried away into the distance herlife's whole happiness.

To be sure, she had fallen in love with everyone whom she had met.This habit dated from her twelfth, nay, from her tenth year. But thistime it was different, oh, so different. This time it was like anaxe-blow from which one doesn't arise. Or like the felldisease--consumption--which had dragged her mother to the grave.

She herself was more like her father, thick-set and sturdy.

She had also inherited his calculating and planning nature. With toughtenacity he could sacrifice years of earning and saving and planningto acquire farms and meadows and orchards. Thus the girl couldmeditate and plan her fate which, until yesterday, had been fluid aswater but which to-day lay definitely anchored in the soul of astranger lad.

Her education had been narrow. She knew the little that an oldgoverness and a comfortable pastor could teach. But she readwhatever she could get hold of--from the tattered "pony" to Homerwhich a boy friend had loaned her, to the most horriblepenny-dreadfuls which were her father's delight in his rare hoursof leisure.

And she assimilated what she read and adapted it to her own fate. Thusher imagination was familiar with happiness, with delusion,with crime....

She knew that she was beautiful. If the humility of her play-fellowshad not assured her of this fact, she would have been enlightened bythe long glances and jesting admiration of her father's guests.

Her father was strict. He interfered with ferocity if a travellerjested with her too intimately. Nevertheless he liked to have her comeinto the inn proper and slip, smiling and curtsying, past thewealthier guests. It was not unprofitable.

Upon his short, fleshy bow-legs, with his suspiciously calculatingblink, with his avarice and his sharp tongue, he stood between her andthe world, permitting only so much of it to approach her as seemed, ata given moment, harmless and useful.

His attitude was fatal to any free communication with her beloved. Heopened and read every letter that she had ever received. Had sheventured to call for one at the post-office, the information wouldhave reached him that very day.

The problem was how to deceive him without placing herself at themercy of some friend.

She sat down in the arbour from which, past the trees of the orchardand the neighbouring river, one had a view of the Russian forests, andput the problem to her seventeen-year old brain. And while the summerwind played with the green fruit on the boughs and the white heronsspread their gleaming wings over the river, she thought out aplan--the first of many by which she meant to rivet her belovedfor life.

On the same afternoon she asked her father's permission to invite thedaughter of the county-physician to visit her.

"Didn't know you were such great friends," he said, surprised.

"Oh, but we are," she pretended to be a little hurt. "We were receivedinto the Church at the same time."

With lightning-like rapidity he computed the advantages that mightresult from such a visit. The county-seat was four miles distant andif the societies of veterans and marksmen in whose committees thedoctor was influential could be persuaded to come hither for theiroutings.... The girl was cordially invited and arrived a week later.She was surprised and touched to find so faithful a friend in Toniwho, when they were both boarding with Pastor Rhode, had played hermany a sly trick.

Two months later the girl, in her turn, invited Toni to the citywhither she had never before been permitted to go alone and so thelatter managed to receive her lover's first letter.

What he wrote was discouraging enough. His father was ill, hence theexcellent practice was gliding into other hands and the means for hisown studies were growing narrow. If things went on so he might have togive up his university course and take to anything to keep his motherand sister from want.

This prospect did not please Toni. She was so proud of him. She couldnot bear to have him descend in the social scale for the sake of breadand butter. She thought and thought how she could help him with money,but nothing occurred to her. She had to be content with encouraginghim and assuring him that her love would find ways and means forhelping him out of his difficulties.

She wrote her letters at night and jumped out of the window in orderto drop them secretly into the pillar box. It was months before shecould secure an answer. His father was better, but life in thefraternity was very expensive, and it was a very grave questionwhether he had not better resign the scarf which he had just gainedand study on as a mere "barb."

In Toni's imagination the picture of her beloved was brilliantlyilluminated by the glory of the tricoloured fraternity scarf, hisdesire for it had become so ardently her own, that she could not bearthe thought of him--his yearning satisfied--returning to the graycommonplace garb of Philistia. And so she wrote him.

Spring came and Toni matured to statelier maidenhood. The plump girl,half-child, droll and naïve, grew to be a thoughtful, silent youngwoman, secretive and very sure of her aims. She condescended to theguests and took no notice of the desperate admiration which surroundedher. Her glowing eyes looked into emptiness, her infinitely temptingmouth smiled carelessly at friends and strangers.

In May Robert's father died.

She read it in one of the papers that were taken at the inn, andimmediately it became clear to her that her whole future was at stake.For if he was crushed now by the load of family cares, if hope weretaken from him, no thought of her or her love would be left. Only ifshe could redeem her promises and help him practically could she hopeto keep him. In the farthest corner of a rarely opened drawer layher mother's jewels which were some day to be hers--brooches andrings, a golden chain, and a comb set with rubies which had found itsway--heaven knows how--into the simple inn.

Without taking thought she stole the whole and sent it asmerchandise--not daring to risk the evidence of registration--to helphim in his studies. The few hundred marks that the jewellery wouldbring would surely keep him until the end of the semester ... butwhat then? ...

And again she thought and planned all through the long, hot nights.

Pastor Rhode's eldest son, a frail, tall junior who followed her, fullof timid passion, came home from college for the spring vacation. Inthe dusk he crept around the inn as had been his wont for years.

This time he had not long to wait.

How did things go at college? Badly. Would he enter the senior classat Michaelmas? Hardly. Then she would have to be ashamed of him, andthat would be a pity: she liked him too well.

The slim lad writhed under this exquisite torture. It wasn't hisfault. He had pains in his chest, and growing pains. And all that.

She unfolded her plan.

"You ought to have a tutor during the long vacation, Emil, to help youwork."

"Papa can do that."

"Oh, Papa is busy. You ought to have a tutor all to yourself, astudent or something like that. If you're really fond of me ask yourPapa to engage one. Perhaps he'll get a young man from his ownfraternity with whom he can chat in the evening. You will ask, won'tyou? I don't like people who are conditioned in their studies."

That same night a letter was sent to her beloved.

"Watch the frat. bulletin! Our pastor is going to look for a tutor forhis boy. See to it that you get the position. I'm longing to seeyou."

Chapter III

Once more it was late July--exactly a year after those memorableevents--and he sat in the stage-coach and took off his crape-hung capto her. His face was torn by fresh scars and diagonally across hisbreast the blue white golden scarf was to be seen.

She grasped the posts of the fence with both hands and felt that shewould die if she could not have him.

Upon that evening she left the house no more, although for two hourshe walked the dusty village street, with Emil, but also alone. But onthe next evening she stood behind the fence. Their hands found eachother across the obstacle.

"Do you sleep on the ground-floor?" she asked whispering.

"Yes."

"Does the dog still bark when he sees you."

"I don't know, I'm afraid so."

"When you've made friends with him so that he won't bark when you getout of the window, then come to the arbour behind our orchard. I'llwait for you every night at twelve. But don't mind that. Don't cometill you're sure of the dog."

For three long nights she sat on the wooden bench of the arbour untilthe coming of dawn and stared into the bluish dusk that hid thevillage as in a cloak. From time to time the dogs bayed. She coulddistinguish the bay of the pastor's collie. She knew his hoarse voice.Perhaps he was barring her beloved's way....

At last, during the fourth night, when his coming was scarcely to behoped for, uncertain steps dragged up the hill.

She did not run to meet him. She crouched in the darkest corner of thearbour and tasted, intensely blissful, the moments during which hefelt his way through the foliage.

Then she clung to his neck, to his lips, demanding and accordingall--rapt to the very peaks of life....

They were together nightly. Few words passed between them. Shescarcely knew how he looked. For not even a beam of the moon couldpenetrate the broad-leaved foliage, and at the peep of dawn theyseparated. She might have lain in the arms of a stranger and not knownthe difference.

And not only during their nightly meetings, but even by day they sliptthrough life-like shadows. One day the pastor came to the inn for aglass of beer and chatted with other gentlemen. She heard him.

"I don't know what's the matter with that young fellow," he said. "Hedoes his duty and my boy is making progress. But he's like a strangerfrom another world. He sits at the table and scarcely sees us. Hetalks and you have the feeling that he doesn't know what he's talkingabout. Either he's anaemic or he writes poetry."

She herself saw the world through a blue veil, heard the voices oflife across an immeasurable distance and felt hot, alien shivers runthrough her enervated limbs.

The early Autumn approached and with it the day of his departure. Atlast she thought of discussing the future with him which, until then,like all else on earth, had sunk out of sight.

His mother, he told her, meant to move to Koenigsberg and earn herliving by keeping boarders. Thus there was at least a possibility ofhis continuing his studies. But he didn't believe that he would beable to finish. His present means would soon be exhausted and he hadno idea where others would come from.

All that he told her in the annoyed and almost tortured tones of onelong weary of hope who only staggers on in fear of more vitaldegradation.

With flaming words she urged him to be of good courage. She insistedupon such resources as--however frugal--were, after all, at hand, andcalculated every penny. She shrugged her shoulders at his gratitudefor that first act of helpfulness. If only there were something elseto be taken. But whence and how? Her suspicious father would haveobserved any shortage in his till at once and would have had the thiefdiscovered.

The great thing was to gain time. Upon her advice he was to leaveKoenigsberg with its expensive fraternity life and pass the winter inBerlin. The rest had to be left to luck and cunning.

In a chill, foggy September night they said farewell. Shivering theyheld each other close. Their hearts were full of the confused hopeswhich they themselves had kindled, not because there was any groundfor hope, but because without it one cannot live.

And a few weeks later everything came to an end.

For Toni knew of a surety that she would be a mother....

Chapter IV.

Into the river!

For that her father would put her in the street was clear. It wasequally clear what would become of her in that case....

But no, not into the river! Why was her young head so practised inskill and cunning, if it was to bow helplessly under the first severeonslaught of fate? What was the purpose of those beautiful long nightsbut to brood upon plans and send far thoughts out toward shining aims?

No, she would not run into the river. That dear wedding-day in five,nay, in four years, was lost anyhow. But the long time could beutilised so cleverly that her beloved could be dragged across theabyss of his fate.

First, then, she must have a father for her child. He must not beclever. He must not be strong of will. Nor young, for youth makesdemands. ... Nor well off, for he who is certain of himself desiresfreedom of choice.

Her choice fell upon a former inn-keeper, a down-hearted man of aboutfifty, moist of eye, faded, with greasy black hair.... He had failedin business some years before and now sat around in the inn, lookingfor a job....

To this her father did not object. For that man's condition was anexcellent foil to his own success and prosperity and thus he waspermitted, at times, to stay a week in the house where, otherwise,charity was scarcely at home.

Her plan worked well. On the first day she lured him silently on. Onthe second he responded. On the third she turned sharply and rebukedhim. On the fourth she forgave him. On the fifth she met him insecret. On the sixth he went on a journey, conscience smitten forhaving seduced her....

That very night--for there was no time to be lost--she confessed withtrembling and blushing to her father that she was overcome by anunconquerable passion for Herr Weigand. As was to be expected she wasdriven from the door with shame and fury.

During the following weeks she went about bathed in tears. Her fatheravoided her. Then, when the right moment seemed to have come, she madea second and far more difficult confession. This time her tremours andher blushes were real, her tears were genuine for her father used ahorse-whip.... But when, that night, Toni sat on the edge of her bedand bathed the bloody welts on her body, she knew that her planwould succeed.

And, to be sure, two days later Herr Weigand returned--a little morefaded, a little more hesitant, but altogether, by no means unhappy. Hewas invited into her father's office for a long discussion. The resultwas that the two lovers fell into each others' arms while her father,trembling with impotent rage, hurled at them the fragments of acrushed cigar.

The banns were proclaimed immediately after the betrothal, and amonth later Herr Weigand, in his capacity of son-in-law, could takepossession of the same garret which he had inhabited as an impecuniousguest. This arrangement, however, was not a permanent one. An inn wasto be rented for the young couple--with her father's money.

Toni, full of zeal and energy, took part in every new undertaking,travelled hither and thither, considered prospects and dangers, butalways withdrew again at the last moment in order to await a faireropportunity.

But she was utterly set upon the immediate furnishing of the new home.She went to Koenigsberg and had long sessions with furniture dealersand tradesmen of all kinds. On account of her delicate condition sheinsisted that she could only travel on the upholstered seats of thesecond class. She charged her father accordingly and in realitytravelled fourth class and sat for hours between market-women andPolish Jews in order to save a few marks. In the accounts she renderedheavy meals were itemized, strengthening wines, stimulating cordials.As a matter of fact, she lived on dried slices of bread which, beforeleaving home, she hid in her trunk.

She did not disdain the saving of a tram car fare, although therebates which she got on the furniture ran into the hundreds.

All that she sent jubilantly to her lover in Berlin, assured that hewas provided for some months.

Thus the great misfortune had finally resulted in a blessing. For,without these unhoped for resources, he must have long fallen bythe way-side.

Months passed. Her furnishings stood in a storage warehouse, but thehouse in which they were to live was not yet found.

When she felt that her hour had come--her father and husband thoughtit far off--she redoubled the energy of her travels, seeking,preferably, rough and ribbed roads which other women in her conditionwere wont to shun.

And thus, one day, in a springless vehicle, two miles distant from thecounty-seat, the pains of labour came upon her. She steeled everynerve and had herself carried to the house of the county-physicianwhose daughter was now tenderly attached to her.

There she gave birth to a girl child which announced its equivocalarrival in this world lustily.

The old doctor, into whose house this confusion had suddenly come,stood by her bed-side, smiling good-naturedly. She grasped him withboth hands, terror in her eyes and in her voice.

"Dear, dear doctor! The baby was born too soon, wasn't it?"

The doctor drew back and regarded her long and earnestly. Then hissmile returned and his kind hand touched her hair.

"Yes, it is as you say. The baby's nails are not fully developed andits weight is slightly below normal. It's all on account of yourcareless rushing about. Surely the child came too soon."

And he gave her the proper certification of the fact which protectedher from those few people who might consider themselves partakers ofher secret. For the opinion of people in general she cared little. Sostrong had she grown through guilt and silence.

And she was a child of nineteen! ...

Chapter V.

When Toni had arisen from her bed of pain she found the place whichshe and her husband had been seeking for months with surprisingrapidity. The "Hotel Germania," the most reputable hotel in thecounty-seat itself was for rent. Its owner had recently died. It waspalatial compared to her father's inn. There were fifteen rooms forguests, a tap-room, a wine-room, a grocery-shop and a livery-stable.

Weigand, intimidated by misfortune, had never even hoped to aspire tosuch heights of splendour. Even now he could only grasp the measure ofhis happiness by calculating enormous profits. And he did this withpeculiar delight. For, since the business was to be run in the name ofToni's father, his own creditors could not touch him.

When they had moved in and the business began to be straightened out,Weigand proved himself in flat contradiction of his slack and carelesscharacter, a tough and circumspect man of business. He knew thewhereabouts of every penny and was not inclined to permit his wife tomake random inroads upon his takings.

Toni, who had expected to be undisputed mistress of the safe sawherself cheated of her dearest hopes, for the time approached when thesavings made on the purchase of her furniture must necessarily beexhausted.

And again she planned and wrestled through the long, warm nights whileher husband, whose inevitable proximity she bore calmly, snored withthe heaviness of many professional "treats."

One day she said to him: "A few pennies must be put by for Amanda."That was the name of the little girl who flourished merrily in hercradle. "You must assign some little profits to me."

"What can I do?" he asked. "For the present everything belongs to theold man."

"I know what I'd like," she went on, smiling dreamily, "I'd like tohave all the profits on the sale of champagne."

He laughed heartily. There wasn't much call for champagne in thelittle county-seat. At most a few bottles were sold on the emperor'sbirthday or when, once in a long while, a flush commercial travellerwanted to regale a recalcitrant customer.

And so Weigand fell in with what he thought a mere mood and assented.

Toni at once made a trip to Koenigsberg and bought all kinds ofphantastic decorations--Chinese lanterns, gilt fans, artificialflowers, gay vases and manicoloured lamp-shades. With all these thingsshe adorned the little room that lay behind the room in which the mostdistinguished townspeople were wont to drink their beer. And so theplace with veiled light and crimson glow looked more like a mysteriousoriental shrine than the sitting-room of an honest Prussianinn-keeper's wife.

She sat evening after evening in this phantastic room. She brought herknitting and awaited the things that were to come.

The gentlemen who drank in the adjoining room, the judges, physicians,planters--all the bigwigs of a small town, in short--soon noticed themagical light that glimmered through the half-open door wheneverWeigand was obliged to pass from the public rooms into his privatedwelling. And the men grew to be curious, the more so as theinn-keeper's young wife, of whose charms many rumours were afloat, hadnever yet been seen by any.

One evening, when the company was in an especially hilarious mood, themen demanded stormily to see the mysterious room.

Weigand hesitated. He would have to ask his wife's permission. Hereturned with the friendly message that the gentlemen were welcome.Hesitant, almost timid, they entered as if crossing the threshold ofsome house of mystery.

There stood--transfigured by the glow of coloured lamps--the shapelyyoung woman with the alluring glow in her eyes, and her lips that werein the form of a heart. She gave each a secretly quivering hand andspoke a few soft words that seemed to distinguish him from the others.Then, still timid and modest, she asked them to be seated and beggedfor permission to serve a glass of champagne in honour ofthe occasion.

It is not recorded who ordered the second bottle. It may have been thevery fat Herr von Loffka, or the permanently hilarious judge. At allevents the short visit of the gentlemen came to an end at threeo'clock in the morning with wild intoxication and a sale of eighteenbottles of champagne, of which half bore French labels.

Toni resisted all requests for a second invitation to her sanctum. Shefirst insisted on the solemn assurance that the gentlemen wouldrespect her presence and bring neither herself nor her house intoill-repute. At last came the imperial county-counsellor himself--awealthy bachelor of fifty with the manners of an injured lady killer.He came to beg for himself and the others and she dared not refuseany longer.

The champagne festivals continued. With this difference: that Toni,whenever the atmosphere reached a certain point of heatedintoxication, modestly withdrew to her bed-room. Thus she succeeded notonly in holding herself spotless but in being praised for herretiring nature.

But she kindled a fire in the heads of these dissatisfied Universitymen who deemed themselves banished into a land of starvation, and inthe senses of the planters' sons. And this fire burned on and createdabout her an atmosphere of madly fevered desire....

Finally it became the highest mark of distinction in the little town,the sign of real connoisseurship in life, to have drunk a bottle ofchampagne with "Germania," as they called her, although she boregreater resemblance to some swarthier lady of Rome. Whoever was notadmitted to her circle cursed his lowliness and his futile life.

Of course, in spite of all precautions, it could not but be that herreputation suffered. The daughter of the county-physician began toavoid her, the wives of social equals followed suit. But no one daredaccuse her of improper relations with any of her adorers. It was evenknown that the county-counsellor, desperate over her stern refusals,was urging her to get a divorce from her husband and marry him. No onesuspected, of course, that she had herself spread this rumour in orderto render pointless the possible leaking out of improprieties....

Nor did any one dream that a bank in Koenigsberg transmitted, in hername, monthly cheques to Berlin that sufficed amply to help anambitious medical student to continue his work.

The news which she received from her beloved was scanty.

In order to remain in communication with him she had thought out asubtle method.

The house of every tradesman or business man in the provinces isflooded with printed advertisements from Berlin which pour out overthe small towns and the open country. Of this printed matter, which isusually thrown aside unnoticed, Toni gathered the most voluminousexamples, carefully preserved the envelopes, and sent them to Robert.Her husband did not notice of course that the same advertising mattercame a second time nor that faint, scarce legible pencil marks pickedout words here and there which, when read consecutively, made completesense and differed very radically from the message which the printedslips were meant to convey....

Years passed. A few ship-wrecked lives marked Toni's path, a fewfemale slanders against her were avenged by the courts. Otherwisenothing of import took place.

And in her heart burned with never-lessening glow the one greatemotion which always supplied fuel to her will, which lent everyaction a pregnant significance and furnished absolution forevery crime.

In the meantime Amanda grew to be a blue-eyed, charming child--gentleand caressing and the image of the man of whose love she was theimpassioned gift.

But Fate, which seems to play its gigantic pranks upon men in the actof punishing them, brought it to pass that the child seemed also tobear some slight resemblance to the stranger who, bowed and servile,stupidly industrious, sucking cigars, was to be seen at hermother's side.

Never was father more utterly devoted to the fruit of his loins thanthis gulled fellow to the strange child to whom the mother did noteven--by kindly inactivity--give him a borrowed right. The morecarefully she sought to separate the child from him, the moreadoringly and tenaciously did he cling to it.

With terror and rage Toni was obliged to admit to herself that no sumwould ever suffice to make Weigand agree to a divorce that separatedhim definitely from the child. And dreams and visions, transplantedinto her brain from evil books, filled Toni's nights with the glitterof daggers and the stain of flowing blood. And fate seemed to urge onthe day when these dreams must take on flesh....

One day she found in the waste-paper basket which she searchedcarefully after every mail-delivery, an advertisement which commendedto the buying public a new make of type-writer.

"Many public institutions," thus the advertisement ran, "use our welltried machines in their offices, because these machines will bear themost rigid examination. Their reputation has crossed the ocean. TheChilean ministry has just ordered a dozen of our 'Excelsiors' bycable. Thus successfully does our invention spread over the world. Andyet its victorious progress is by no means completed. Even in Japan--"and so on.

If one looked at this stuff very carefully, one could observe thatcertain words were lightly marked in pencil. And if one read thesewords consecutively, the following sentence resulted:

"Public--examination--just--successfully--completed."

From this day on the room with the veiled lamps remained closed to hereager friends. From this day on the generous county-counsellor sawthat his hopes were dead....

Chapter VI.

How was the man to be disposed of?

An open demand for divorce would have been stupid, for it would havethrown a very vivid suspicion upon any later and more drastic attempt.

Weigand's walk and conversation were blameless. Her one hope consistedin catching him in some chance infidelity. The desire for change, shereasoned, the allurement of forbidden fruit, must inflame even thiswooden creature.

She had never, hitherto, paid the slightest attention to the problemof waitresses. Now she travelled to Koenigsberg and hired thehandsomest women to be found in the employment bureaus. They came, oneafter another, a feline Polish girl, a smiling, radiantly blond childof Sweden--a Venus, a Germania--this time a genuine one. Next came apretended Circassian princess. And they all wandered off again, andWeigand had no glance for them but that of the master.

Antonie was discouraged and dropped her plan.

What now?

She had recoiled from no baseness. She had sacrificed to her lovehonour, self-respect, truth, righteousness and pride. But she hadavoided hitherto the possibility of a conflict with the law.Occasional small thefts in the house did not count.

But the day had come when crime itself, crime that threatened remorseand the sword of judgment, entered her life. For otherwise she couldnot get rid of her husband.

The regions that lie about the eastern boundary of the empire arehaunted by Jewish peddlers who carry in their sacks Russian drops,candied fruits, gay ribands, toys made of bark, and other pleasantthings which make them welcome to young people. But they also supplysterner needs. In the bottom of their sacks are hidden love philtresand strange electuaries. And if you press them very determinedly, youwill find some among them who have the little white powders that canbe poured into beer ... or the small, round discs which the commonfolk call "crow's eyes" and which the greedy apothecaries will notsell you merely for the reason that they prepare the costlierstrychnine from them.

You will often see these beneficent men in the twilight in secretcolloquy with female figures by garden-gates and the edges of woods.The female figures slip away if you happen to appear on the road....Often, too, these men are asked into the house and intimate council isheld with them--especially when husband and servants are busy in thefields....

One evening in the beginning of May, Toni brought home with her from aharmless walk a little box of arsenic and a couple of small, harddiscs that rattled merrily in one's pocket.... Cold sweat ran down herthroat and her legs trembled so that she had to sit down on a case ofsoap before entering the house.

Her husband asked her what was wrong.

"Ah, it's the spring," she answered and laughed.

Soon her adorers noticed, and not these only, that her lovelinessincreased from day to day. Her eyes which, under their depressedbrows, had assumed a sharp and peering gaze, once more glowed withtheir primal fire, and a warm rosiness suffused her cheeks that spreadmarvelously to her forehead and throat.

Her appearance made so striking an impression that many a one who hadnot seen her for a space stared at her and asked, full of admiration:"What have you done to yourself?"

"It is the spring," she answered and laughed.

As a matter of fact she had taken to eating arsenic.

She had been told that any one who becomes accustomed to the use ofthis poison can increase the doses to such an extent that he can takewithout harm a quantity that will necessarily kill another. And shehad made up her mind to partake of the soup which she meant, some day,to prepare for her husband. That much she held to be due a faultlessclaim of innocence.

But she was unfortunate enough to make a grievous mistake one day, andlay writhing on the floor in uncontrollable agony.

The old physician at once recognized the symptoms of arsenicpoisoning, prescribed the necessary antidotes and carefully draggedher back into life. The quantity she had taken, he declared, shakinghis head, was enough to slay a strong man. He transmitted theinformation of the incident as demanded by law.

Detectives and court-messengers visited the house. The entire buildingwas searched, documents had to be signed and all reports werecarefully followed up.

The dear romantic public refused to be robbed of its opinion that oneof Toni's rejected admirers had thus sought to avenge himself. Thesuspicion of the authorities, however, fastened itself upon awaitress, a plump, red-haired wanton who had taken the place of theimported beauties and whose insolent ugliness the men of the town,relieved of nobler delights, enjoyed thoroughly. The insight of theinvestigating judge had found in the girl's serving in the house andher apparent intimacy with its master a scent which he would by nomeans abandon. Only, because a few confirmatory details were still toseek, the suspicion was hidden not only from the public but even fromits object.

Antonie, however, ailed continually. She grew thin, her digestion wasdelicate. If the blow was to be struck--and many circumstances urgedit--she would no longer be able to share the poison with her victim.But it seemed fairly certain that suspicion would very definitely fallnot upon her but upon the other woman. The latter would have to besacrificed, so much was clear.

But that was the difficulty. The wounded conscience might recover, thecrime might be conquered into forgetfulness, if only that is slainwhich burdens the earth, which should never have been. But Toni feltthat her soul could not drag itself to any bourne of peace if, for herown advantage, she cast one who was innocent to lasting andirremediable destruction.

The simplest thing would have been to dismiss the woman. In that case,however, it was possible that the courts would direct theirinvestigations to her admirers. One of them had spoken hasty andcareless words. He might not be able to clear himself, were theaccusation directed against him.

There remained but one hope: to ascribe the unavertible death of herhusband to some accident, some heedlessness. And so she directed herunwavering purpose to this end.

The Polish peddler had slipped into Toni's hand not only the arsenicbut also the deadly little discs called "crow's eyes." These must helpher, if used with proper care and circumspection.

One day while little Amanda was playing in the yard with other girls,she found among the empty kerosene barrels a few delightful, silverydiscs, no larger then a ten pfennig piece. With great delight shebrought them to her mother who, attending to her knitting, had ceasedfor a moment to watch the children.

"What's that, Mama?"

"I don't know, my darling."

"May we play with them?"

"What would you like to play?"

"We want to throw them."

"No, don't do that. But I'll make you a new doll-carriage and thesewill be lovely wheels."

The children assented and Amanda brought a pair of scissors in orderto make holes in the little wheels. But they were too hard and thepoints of the blades slipped.

"Ask father to use his small gimlet."

Amanda ran to the open window behind which he for whom all this wasprepared was quietly making out his monthly bills.

Toni's breath failed. If he recognised the poisonous fruits, it wasall over with her plan. But the risk was not to be avoided.

He looked at the discs for a moment. And yet for another. No, he didnot know their nature but was rather pleased with them. It did noteven occur to him to warn the little girl to beware of theunknown fruit.

He called into the shop ordering an apprentice to bring him atool-case. The boy in his blue apron came and Toni observed that hiseyes rested upon the fruits for a perceptible interval. Thus therewas, in addition to the children, another witness and one who would beadmitted to oath.

Weigand bored holes into four of the discs and threw them, jestingkindly, into the children's apron. The others he kept. "He haspronounced his own condemnation," Toni thought as with tremblingfingers she mended an old toy to fit the new wheels.

Nothing remained but to grind the proper dose with cinnamon, tosweeten it--according to instructions--and spice a rice-puddingtherewith.

But fate which, in this delicate matter, had been hostile to her fromthe beginning, ordained it otherwise.

For that very evening came the apothecary, not, as a rule, a timidperson. He was pale and showed Weigand the fruits. He had, by themerest hair-breadth, prevented his little girl Marie from nibblingone of them.

The rest followed as a matter of course. The new wheels were takenfrom the doll-carriage, all fragments were carefully sought out andall the discs were given to the apothecary who locked them intohis safe.

"The red-headed girl must be sacrificed after all," Toni thought.

She planned and schemed, but she could think of no way by which thewaitress could be saved from that destruction which hung over her.

There was no room for further hesitation. The path had to be troddento its goal. Whether she left corpses on the way-side, whether sheherself broke down dead at the goal--it did not matter. That plan ofher life which rivetted her fate to her beloved's forever demandedthat she proceed.

The old physician came hurrying to the inn next morning. He wasutterly confounded by the scarcely escaped horrors.

"You really look," he said to Toni, "as if you had swallowed some ofthe stuff, too."

"Oh, I suppose my fate will overtake me in the end," she answered witha weary smile. "I feel it in my bones: there will be some misfortunein our house."

"It isn't she! I'll take my oath on that," she said eagerly andthought that she had done a wonderfully clever thing.

She waited in suspense, fearing that the authorities would take acloser look at this last incident. She was equipped for anysearch--even one that might penetrate to her own bed-room. For she hadput false bottoms into the little medicine-boxes. Beneath these shekept the arsenic. On top lay harmless magnesia. The boxes themselvesstood on her toilet-table, exposed to all eyes and hence withdrawnfrom all suspicion.

She waited till evening, but nobody came. And yet the connectionbetween this incident and the former one seemed easy enough toestablish. However that might be, she assigned the final deed to thevery next day. And why wait? An end had to be made of this torture ofhesitation which, at every new scruple, seemed to freeze her veryheart's blood. Furthermore the finding of the "crow's eyes" would beof use in leading justice astray.

To-morrow, then ... to-morrow....

Weigand had gone to bed early. But Toni sat behind the door of thepublic room and, through a slit of the door, listened to everymovement of the waitress. She had kept near her all evening. Shescarcely knew why. But a strange, dull hope would not die in her--ahope that something might happen whereby her unsuspecting victim andherself might both be saved.

The clock struck one. The public rooms were all but empty. Only a fewyoung clerks remained. These were half-drunk and made rough advancesto the waitress.

She resisted half-serious, half-jesting.

"You go out and cool yourselves in the night-air. I don't care aboutsuch fellows as you."

"I suppose you want only counts and barons," one of them taunted her."I suppose you wouldn't even think the county-counsellor good enough!"

"That's my affair," she answered, "as to who is good enough for me. Ihave my choice. I can get any man I want."

They laughed at her and she flew into a rage.

"If you weren't such a beggarly crew and had anything to bet, I'dwager you any money that I'd seduce any man I want in a week. In aweek, do I say? In three days! Just name the man."

Antonie quivered sharply and then sank with closed eyes, against theback of her chair. A dream of infinite bliss stole through her being.Was there salvation for her in this world? Could this coarse creatureaccomplish that in which beauty and refinement had failed?

Could she be saved from becoming a murderess? Would it be granted herto remain human, with a human soul and a human face?

But this was no time for tears or weakening.

With iron energy she summoned all her strength and quietude andwisdom. The moment was a decisive one.

When the last guests had gone and all servants, too, had gone to theirrest, she called the waitress, with some jesting reproach, intoher room.

A long whispered conversation followed. At its end the woman declaredthat the matter was child's play to her.

And did not suspect that by this game she was saving her life.

Chapter VII.

In hesitant incredulity Antonie awaited the things that were to come.

On the first day a staggering thing happened. The red-headed woman,scolding at the top of her voice, threw down a beer-glass at hermaster's feet, upon which he immediately gave her notice.

Toni's newly-awakened hope sank. The woman had boasted. And what wasworse than all: if the final deed could be accomplished, her compactwith the waitress would damn her. The woman would of course use thisweapon ruthlessly. The affair had never stood so badly.

But that evening she breathed again. For Weigand declared that thewaitress seemed to have her good qualities too and her heart-feltprayers had persuaded him to keep her.

For several days nothing of significance took place except thatWeigand, whenever he mentioned the waitress, peered curiously aside.And this fact Toni interpreted in a favorable light.

Toni followed directions.... The poor substitute crept down thestairs--caught and powerless. He followed his wife who knelt sobbingbeside their bed. She was not to be comforted, nor to be moved. Sherepulsed him and wept and wept.

Weigand had never dreamed that he was so passionately loved. The moreviolent was the anger of the deceived wife.... She demanded divorce,instant divorce....

He begged and besought and adjured. In vain.

Next he enlisted the sympathy of his father-in-law who had taken nogreat interest in the business during these years, but was content ifthe money he had invested in it paid the necessary six percent. promptly.

The old man came immediately and made a scene with his recalcitrantdaughter.... There was the splendid business and the heavy investment!She was not to think that he would give her one extra penny. He wouldsimply withdraw his capital and let her and the child starve.

Toni did not even deign to reply.

The suit progressed rapidly. The unequivocal testimony of the waitressrendered any protest nugatory.

Three months later Toni put her possessions on a train, took herchild, whom the deserted father followed with an inarticulate moan,and travelled to Koenigsberg where she rented a small flat in order toawait in quiet the reunion with her beloved.

The latter was trying to work up a practice in a village close to theRussian border. He wrote that things were going slowly and that,hence, he must be at his post night and day. So soon as he had theslightest financial certainty for his wife and child, he wouldcome for them.

And so she awaited the coming of her life's happiness. She had littleto do, and passed many happy hours in imagining how he would rushin--by yonder passage--through this very door--tall and slender andimpassioned and press her to his wildly throbbing heart. And everagain, though she knew it to be a foolish dream, did she see the bluewhite golden scarf upon his chest and the blue and gold cap upon hisblond curls.

Lonely widows--even those of the divorced variety--find friends andready sympathy in the land of good hearts. But Antonie avoidedeveryone who sought her society. Under the ban of her great secretpurpose she had ceased to regard men and women except as they could beturned into the instruments of her will. And her use for them wasover. As for their merely human character and experience--Toni sawthrough these at once. And it all seemed to her futile and trivial inthe fierce reflection of those infernal fires through which she hadhad to pass.

Adorned like a bride and waiting--thus she lived quietly and modestlyon the means which her divorced husband--in order to keep his own headabove water--managed to squeeze out of the business.

Suddenly her father died. People said that his death was due tounconquerable rage over her folly....

She buried him, bearing herself all the while with blameless filialpiety and then awoke to the fact that she was rich.

She wrote to her beloved: "Don't worry another day. We are in aposition to choose the kind of life that pleases us."

He wired back: "Expect me to-morrow."

Full of delight and anxiety she ran to the mirror and discovered forthe thousandth time, that she was beautiful again. The results ofpoisoning had disappeared, crime and degradation had burned no marksinto her face. She stood there--a ruler of life. Her whole beingseemed sure of itself, kindly, open. Only the wild glance might, attimes, betray the fact that there was much to conceal.

She kept wakeful throughout the night, as she had done through manyanother. Plan after plan passed through her busy brain. It was with aneffort that she realised the passing of such grim necessities.

Chapter VIII.

A bunch of crysanthemums stood on the table, asters in vases ondresser and chiffonier--colourful and scentless.

Antonie wore a dress of black lace that had been made by the bestdressmaker in the city for this occasion. In festive array shedesired to meet her beloved and yet not utterly discard the garb offilial grief. But she had dressed the child in white, with white silkstockings and sky-blue ribands. It was to meet its father like theincarnate spirit of approaching happiness.

From the kitchen came the odours of the choicest autumn dishes--roastduck with apples and a grape-cake, such as she alone knew how toprepare. Two bottles of precious Rhine wine stood in the cool withoutthe window. She did not want to welcome him with champagne. Thememories of its subtle prickling, and of much else connectedtherewith, nauseated her.

If he left his village at six in the morning he must arrive at noon.

And she waited even as she had waited seven years. This morning sevenhours had been left, there were scarcely seven minutes now. Andthen--the door-bell rang.

"That is the new uncle," she said to Amanda who was handling herfinery, flattered and astonished, and she wondered to note her braingrow suddenly so cool and clear.

A gentleman entered. A strange gentleman. Wholly strange. Had she methim on the street she would not have known him.

He had grown old--forty, fifty, an hundred years. Yet his real agecould not be over twenty-eight! ...

He had grown fat. He carried a little paunch about with him, round andcomfortable. And the honourable scars gleamed in round red cheeks. Hiseyes seemed small and receding....

And when he said: "Here I am at last," it was no longer the old voice,clear and a little resonant, which had echoed and re-echoed in herspiritual ear. He gurgled as though he had swallowed dumplings.

But when he took her hand and smiled, something slipt into hisface--something affectionate and quiet, empty and without guile orsuspicion.

Where was she accustomed to this smile? To be sure; in Amanda. Anindubitable inheritance.

And for the sake of this empty smile an affectionate feeling for thisstranger came into her heart. She helped him take off his overcoat. Hewore a pair of great, red-lined rubber goloshes, typical of thecountry doctor. He took these off carefully and placed them with theirtoes toward the wall.

"He has grown too pedantic," she thought.

Then all three entered the room. When Toni saw him in the light of dayshe missed the blue white golden scarf at once. But it would havelooked comical over his rounded paunch. And yet its absencedisillusioned her. It seemed to her as if her friend had doffed thehalo for whose sake she had served him and looked up to him so long.

As for him, he regarded her with unconcealed admiration.

"Well, well, one can be proud of you!" he said, sighing deeply, and italmost seemed as if with this sigh a long and heavy burden lifteditself from his soul.

"He was afraid he might have to be ashamed of me," she thoughtrebelliously. As if to protect herself she pushed the little girlbetween them.

"Here is Amanda," she said, and added with a bitter smile: "Perhapsyou remember."

But he didn't even suspect the nature of that which she wanted to makehim feel.

"Oh, I've brought something for you, little one!" he cried with thedelight of one who recalls an important matter in time. With measuredstep he trotted back into the hall and brought out a flat paste-boardbox tied with pink ribands. He opened it very carefully and revealed alayer of chocolate-creams wrapped in tin-foil and offered oneto Amanda.

And this action seemed to him, obviously, to satisfy all requirementsin regard to his preliminary relations to the child.

Antonie felt the approach of a head-ache such as she had now and thenever since the arsenic poisoning.

"You are probably hungry, dear Robert," she said.

He wouldn't deny that. "If one is on one's legs from four o'clock inthe morning on, you know, and has nothing in one's stomach but acouple of little sausages, you know!"

He said all that with the same cheerfulness that seemed to come to himas a matter of course and yet did not succeed in wholly hiding aninner diffidence.

They sat down at the table and Antonie, taking pleasure in seeing tohis comfort, forgot for a moment the foolish ache that tugged at herbody and at her soul.

The wine made him talkative. He related everything that interestedhim--his professional trips across country, the confinements thatsometimes came so close together that he had to spend twenty-fourhours in his buggy. Then he told of the tricks by which people whoselives he had just saved sought to cheat him out of his modest fees.And he told also of the comfortable card-parties with the judge andthe village priest. And how funny it was when the inn-keeper's tamestarling promenaded on the cards....

Every word told of cheerful well-being and unambitious contentment.

"He doesn't think of our common future," a torturing suspicionwhispered to her.

But he did.

"I should like to have you try, first of all, Toni, to live there. Itisn't easy. But we can both stand a good deal, thank God, and if wedon't like it in the end, why, we can move away."

And he said that so simply and sincerely that her suspicion vanished.

And with this returning certitude there returned, too, the ambitionwhich she had always nurtured for him.

"How would it be if we moved to Berlin, or somewhere where there is auniversity?"

"And maybe aim at a professorship?" he cried with cheerful irony. "No,Tonichen, all your money can't persuade me to that. I crammed enoughin that damned medical school, I've got my income and that's goodenough for me."

A feeling of disgust came over her. She seemed to perceive the stuffyodour of unventilated rooms and of decaying water in which flowershad stood.

"That is what I suffered for," involuntarily the thought came,"_that!_"

After dinner when Amanda was sleeping off the effects of the littlesip of wine which she had taken when they let her clink glasses withthem, they sat opposite each other beside the geraniums of thewindow-box and fell silent. He blew clouds of smoke from his cigarinto the air and seemed not disinclined to indulge in a nap, too.

Leaning back in her wicker chair she observed him uninterruptedly. Atone moment it seemed to her as though she caught an intoxicatingremnant of the slim, pallid lad to whom she had given her love. Andthen again came the corroding doubt: "Was it for him, for him...." Andthen a great fear oppressed her heart, because this man seemed to livein a world which she could not reach in a whole life's pilgrimage.Walls had arisen between them, doors had been bolted--doors that rosefrom the depths of the earth to the heights of heaven.... As he satthere, surrounded by the blue smoke of his cigar, he seemed more andmore to recede into immeasurable distances....

Then, suddenly, as if an inspiration had come to him, he pulledhimself together, and his face became serious, almost solemn. He laidthe cigar down on the window-box and pulled out of his inner pocket abundle of yellow sheets of paper and blue note-books.

"I should have done this a long time ago," he said, "because we'vebeen free to correspond with each other. But I put it off to ourfirst meeting."

"Done what?" she asked, seized by an uncomfortable curiosity.

"Why, render an accounting."

"An accounting?"

"But dear Toni, surely you don't think me either ungrateful ordishonourable. For seven years I have accepted one benefaction afteranother from you.... That was a very painful situation for me, dearchild, and I scarcely believe that the circumstances, had they beenknown, would ever have been countenanced by a court of honour."

"Ah, yes," she said slowly. "I confess I never thought of _that_consideration...."

"But I did all the more, for that very reason. And only theconsciousness that I would some day be able to pay you the last pennyof my debt sustained me in my consciousness as a decent fellow."

"Ah, well, if that's the case, go ahead!" she said, suppressing thebitter sarcasm that she felt.

First came the receipts: The proceeds of the stolen jewels began thelong series. Then followed the savings in fares, food and drink andthe furniture rebates. Next came the presents of the county-counsellor,the profits of the champagne debauches during which she had flungshame and honour under the feet of the drinking men. She was sparednothing, but heard again of sums gained by petty thefts fromthe till, small profits made in the buying of milk and eggs. Itwas a long story of suspense and longing, an inextricable web offalsification and trickery, of terror and lying without end. Thememory of no guilt and no torture was spared her.

Then he took up the account of his expenditures. He sat there, eagerlyhandling the papers, now frowning heavily when he could not at oncebalance some small sum, now stiffening his double chin in satisfiedself-righteousness as he explained some new way of saving that hadoccurred to him.... Again and again, to the point of weariness, hereiterated solemnly: "You see, I'm an honest man."

And always when he said that, a weary irony prompted her to reply:"Ah, what that honesty has cost me." ... But she held her peace.

And again she wanted to cry out: "Let be! A woman like myself doesn'tcare for these two-penny decencies." But she saw how deep an innernecessity it was to him to stand before her in this conventionalspotlessness. And so she didn't rob him of his childlike joy.

At last he made an end and spread out the little blue books beforeher--there was one for each year. "Here," he said proudly, "you can goover it yourself. It's exact."

"It had better be!" she cried with a jesting threat and put the littlebooks under a flower-pot.

A prankish mood came upon her now which she couldn't resist.

"Now that this important business is at an end," she said, "there isstill another matter about which I must have some certainty."

"What is that?" he said, listening intensely.

"Have you been faithful to me in all this time?"

He became greatly confused. The scars on his left cheek glowed likethick, red cords.

"Perhaps he's got a betrothed somewhere," she thought with a kind ofwoeful anger, "whom he's going to throw over now."

But it wasn't that. Not at all. "Well," he said, "there's no help forit. I'll confess. And anyhow, _you've_ even been married in themeantime."

"I would find it difficult to deny that," she said.

And then everything came to light. During the early days in Berlin hehad been very intimate with a waitress. Then, when he was an assistantin the surgical clinic, there had been a sister who even wanted to bemarried. "But I made short work of that proposition," he explainedwith quiet decision. And as for the Lithuanian servant girl whom hehad in the house now, why, of course he would dismiss her nextmorning, so that the house could be thoroughly aired before shemoved in.

This was the moment in which a desire came upon her--half-ironic,half-compassionate--to throw her arms about him and say: "Yousilly boy!"

But she did not yield and in the next moment the impulse was gone.Only an annoyed envy remained. He dared to confess everything toher--everything. What if she did the same? If he were to leave her inhorrified silence, what would it matter? She would have freed hersoul. Or perhaps he would flare up in grateful love? It was madness toexpect it. No power of heaven or earth could burst open the doors ordemolish the walls that towered between them for all eternity.

A vast irony engulfed her. She could not rest her soul upon thispigmy. She felt revengeful rather toward him--revengeful, because hecould sit there opposite her so capable and faithful, so truthful anddecent, so utterly unlike the companion whom she needed.

Toward twilight he grew restless. He wanted to slip over to his motherfor a moment and then, for another moment, he wanted to drop in at thefraternity inn. He had to leave at eight.

"It would be better if you remained until to-morrow," she said with anemphasis that gave him pause.

"Why?"

"If you don't feel that...."

She shrugged her shoulders.

It wasn't to be done, he assured her, with the best will in the world.There was an investigation in which he had to help the county-physician.A small farmer had died suddenly of what did not seem an entirelynatural death. "I suppose," he continued, "one of those lovephiltres was used with which superfluous people are put underground there. It's horrible that a decent person has to liveamong such creatures. If you don't care to do it, I can hardly blameyou." She had grown pale and smiled weakly. She restrained himno longer.

"I'll be back in a week," he said, slipping on his goloshes, "and thenwe can announce the engagement."

She nodded several times but made no reply.

The door was opened and he leaned toward her. Calmly she touched hislips with hers.

"You might have the announcement cards printed," he called cheerfullyfrom the stairs.

Then he disappeared....

"Is the new uncle gone?" Amanda asked. She was sitting in her littleroom, busy with her lessons. He had forgotten her.

The mother nodded.

"Will he come back soon?"

Antonie shook her head.

"I scarcely think so," she answered.

That night she broke the purpose of her life, the purpose that hadbecome interwoven with a thousand others, and when the morning cameshe wrote a letter of farewell to the beloved of her youth.

THE SONG OF DEATH

With faint and quivering beats the clock of the hotel announced thehour to the promenaders on the beach.

"It is time to eat, Nathaniel," said a slender, yet well-filled-outyoung woman, who held a book between her fingers, to a formlessbundle, huddled in many shawls, by her side. Painfully the bundleunfolded itself, stretched and grew gradually into the form of aman--hollow chested, thin legged, narrow shouldered, attired inflopping garments, such as one sees by the thousands on the coasts ofthe Riviera in winter.

The midday glow of the sun burned down upon the yellowish gray wall ofcliff into which the promenade of Nervi is hewn, and which slopes downto the sea in a zigzag of towering bowlders.

Upon the blue mirror of the sea sparkled a silvery meshwork ofsunbeams. So vast a fullness of light flooded the landscape that eventhe black cypress trees which stood, straight and tall, beyond thegarden walls, seemed to glitter with a radiance of their own. The tidewas silent. Only the waters of the imprisoned springs that poured,covered with iridescent bubbles, into the hollows between the rocks,gurgled and sighed wearily.

The breakfast bell brought a new pulsation of life to the huddledfigures on the beach.

"He who eats is cured," is the motto of the weary creatures whose armsare often too weak to carry their forks to their mouths. But he whocomes to this land of eternal summer merely to ease and rest his soul,trembles with hunger in the devouring sweetness of the air and canscarcely await the hour of food.

With a gentle compulsion the young woman pushed the thin, wrinkledhand of the invalid under her arm and led him carefully through a cooland narrow road, which runs up to the town between high garden wallsand through which a treacherous draught blows even on thesunniest days.

"Are you sure your mouth is covered?" she asked, adapting her springygait with difficulty to the dragging steps of her companion.

An inarticulate murmur behind the heavy shawl was his only answer.

She stretched her throat a little--a round, white, firm throat, withtwo little folds that lay rosy in the rounded flesh. Closing her eyes,she inhaled passionately the aromatic perfumes of the neighbouringgardens. It was a strange mixture of odours, like that which is waftedfrom the herb chamber of an apothecary. A wandering sunbeam glidedover the firm, short curve of her cheek, which was of almost milkywhiteness, save for the faint redness of those veins which sleeplessnights bring out upon the pallid faces of full-blooded blondes.

A laughing group of people went swiftly by--white-breeched Englishmenand their ladies. The feather boas, whose ends fluttered in the wind,curled tenderly about slender throats, and on the reddish heads bobbedlittle round hats, smooth and shining as the tall head-gear of aGerman postillion.

The young woman cast a wistful glance after those happy folk, andpressed more firmly the arm of her suffering husband.

Other groups followed. It was not difficult to overtake this pair.

"We'll be the last, Mary," Nathaniel murmured, with the invalid'sready reproach.

But the young woman did not hear. She listened to a soft chatting,which, carried along between the sounding-boards of these high walls,was clearly audible. The conversation was conducted in French, and shehad to summon her whole stock of knowledge in order not to lose thefull sense of what was said. "I hope, Madame, that your uncle is notseriously ill?"

"Not at all, sir. But he likes his comfort. And since walking boreshim, he prefers to pass his days in an armchair. And it's my functionto entertain him." An arch, pouting _voila_ closed the explanation.

Next came a little pause. Then the male voice asked:

"And are you never free, Madame?"

"Almost never."

"And may I never again hope for the happiness of meeting you on thebeach?"

"But surely you may!"

"_Mille remerciments; Madame_."

A strangely soft restrained tone echoed in this simple word of thanks.Secret desires murmured in it and unexpressed confessions.

Mary, although she did not look as though she were experienced inflirtation or advances, made a brief, timid gesture. Then, as thoughdiscovered and ashamed, she remained very still.

Those two then.... That's who it was....

And they had really made each others' acquaintance!

She was a delicately made and elegant Frenchwoman. Her bodice was cutin a strangely slender way, which made her seem to glide along like abird. Or was it her walk that caused the phenomenon? Or the exquisitearching of her shoulders? Who could tell? ... She did not take hermeals at the common table, but in a corner of the dining-hall incompany of an old gouty gentleman with white stubbles on his chin andred-lidded eyes. When she entered the hall she let a smiling glanceglide along the table, but without looking at or saluting any one. Shescarcely touched the dishes--at least from the point of view of Mary'ssturdy appetite--but even before the soup was served she nibbled atthe dates meant for dessert, and then the bracelets upon herincredibly delicate wrists made a strange, fairy music. She wore awedding ring. But it had always been open to doubt whether the oldgentleman was her husband. For her demeanour toward him was that of aspoiled but sedulously watched child.

And he--he sat opposite Mary at table. He was a very dark young man,with black, melancholy eyes--Italian eyes, one called them in herPomeranian home land. He had remarkably white, narrow hands, and asmall, curly beard, which was clipped so close along the cheeks thatthe skin itself seemed to have a bluish shimmer. He had never spokento Mary, presumably because he knew no German, but now and then hewould let his eyes rest upon her with a certain smiling emotion whichseemed to her to be very blameworthy and which filled her withconfusion. Thus, however, it had come to pass that, whenever she gotready to go to table her thoughts were busy with him, and it was notrare for her to ask herself at the opening of the door to thedining-hall: "I wonder whether he's here or will come later?"

For several days there had been noticeable in this young man aninclination to gaze over his left shoulder to the side table at whichthe young Frenchwoman sat. And several times this glance had met ananswering one, however fleeting. And more than that! She could be seenobserving him with smiling consideration as, between the fish and theroast, she pushed one grape after another between her lips. He was, ofcourse, not cognisant of all that, but Mary knew of it and wassurprised and slightly shocked.

And they had really made each others' acquaintance!

And now they were both silent, thinking, obviously, that they had butjust come within hearing distance.

Then they hurried past the slowly creeping couple. The lady lookeddownward, kicking pebbles; the gentleman bowed. It was done seriously,discreetly, as befits a mere neighbour at table. Mary blushed. Thathappened often, far too often. And she was ashamed. Thus it happenedthat she often blushed from fear of blushing.

The gentleman saw it and did not smile. She thanked him for it in herheart, and blushed all the redder, for he _might_ have smiled.

"We'll have to eat the omelettes cold again," the invalid mumbled intohis shawls.

This time she understood him.

"Then we'll order fresh ones."

"Oh," he said reproachfully, "you haven't the courage. You're alwaysafraid of the waiters."

She looked up at him with a melancholy smile.

It was true. She was afraid of the waiters. That could not be denied.Her necessary dealings with these dark and shiny-haired gentlemen inevening clothes were a constant source of fear and annoyance. Theyscarcely gave themselves the trouble to understand her bad French andher worse Italian. And when they dared to smile...!

But his concern had been needless. The breakfast did not consist ofomelettes, but of macaroni boiled in water and mixed with long stringsof cheese. He was forbidden to eat this dish.

Mary mixed his daily drink, milk with brandy, and was happy to see theeagerness with which he absorbed the life-giving fumes. The darkgentleman was already in his seat opposite her, and every now and thenthe glance of his velvety eyes glided over her. She was more keenlyconscious of this glance than ever, and dared less than ever to meetit. A strange feeling, half delight and half resentment, overcame her.And yet she had no cause to complain that his attention passed theboundary of rigid seemliness.

She stroked her heavy tresses of reddish blonde hair, which curvedmadonna-like over her temples. They had not been crimped or curled,but were simple and smooth, as befits the wife of a North Germanclergyman. She would have liked to moisten with her lips the fingerswith which she stroked them. This was the only art of the toilet whichshe knew. But that would have been improper at table.

He wore a yellow silk shirt with a pattern of riding crops. A bunch ofviolets stuck in his button-hole. Its fragrance floated acrossthe table.

Now the young Frenchwoman entered the hall too. Very carefully shepressed her old uncle's arm, and talked to him in a stream ofcharming chatter.

The dark gentleman quivered. He compressed his lips but did not turnaround. Neither did the lady take any notice of him. She rolled breadpellets with her nervous fingers, played with her bracelets and letthe dishes go by untouched.

The long coat of cream silk, which she had put on, increased the tallflexibility of her form. A being woven of sunlight and morning dew,unapproachable in her serene distinction--thus she appeared to Mary,whose hands had been reddened by early toil, and whose breadth ofshoulder was only surpassed by her simplicity of heart.

When the roast came Nathaniel revived slightly. He suffered her tofasten the shawl about his shoulders, and rewarded her with acontented smile. It was her sister Anna's opinion that at such momentshe resembled the Saviour. The eyes in their blue hollows gleamed witha ghostly light, a faint rosiness shone upon his cheek-bones, and eventhe blonde beard on the sunken cheeks took on a certain glow.

Grateful for the smile, she pressed his arm. She was satisfied with solittle.

Breakfast was over. The gentleman opposite made his silent bow andarose.

"Will he salute her?" Mary asked herself with some inner timidity.

No. He withdrew without glancing at the corner table.

"Perhaps they have fallen out again," Mary; said to herself. The ladylooked after him. A gentle smile played about the corners of hermouth--a superior, almost an ironical smile. Then, her eyes stillturned to the door, she leaned across toward the old gentleman ineager questioning.

"She doesn't care for him," Mary reasoned, with a slight feeling ofsatisfaction. It was as though some one had returned to her what shehad deemed lost.

He had been gone long, but his violets had left their fragrance.

Mary went up to her room to get a warmer shawl for Nathaniel. As shecame out again, she saw in the dim hall the radiant figure of theFrench lady come toward her and open the door to the left of herown room.

"So we are neighbours," Mary thought, and felt flattered by theproximity. She would have liked to salute her, but she did not dare.

Then she accompanied Nathaniel down to the promenade on the beach. Thehours dragged by.

He did not like to have his brooding meditation interrupted byquestions or anecdotes. These hours were dedicated to getting well.Every breath here cost money and must be utilised to the utmost. Herebreathing was religion, and falling ill a sin.

Mary looked dreamily out upon the sea, to which the afternoon sun nowlent a deeper blue. Light wreaths of foam eddied about the stones. Inwide semicircles the great and shadowy arms of the mountains embracedthe sea. From the far horizon, in regions of the upper air, came fromtime to time an argent gleam. For there the sun was reflected byunseen fields of snow.

There lay the Alps, and beyond them, deep buried in fog and winter,lay their home land.

Thither Mary's thoughts wandered. They wandered to a sharp-gabledlittle house, groaning under great weights of snow, by the strand of afrozen stream. The house was so deeply hidden in bushes that thedepending boughs froze fast in the icy river and were not liberatedtill the tardy coming of spring.

And a hundred paces from it stood the white church and the comfortableparsonage. But what did she care for the parsonage, even though shehad grown to womanhood in it and was now its mistress?

That little cottage--the widow's house, as the country folk calledit--that little cottage held everything that was dear to her at home.There sat by the green tile oven--and oh, how she missed it here,despite the palms and the goodly sun--her aged mother, the formerpastor's widow, and her three older sisters, dear and blonde and thinand almost faded. There they sat, worlds away, needy and laborious,and living but in each others' love. Four years had passed since thefather had been carried to the God's acre and they had had to leavethe parsonage.

That had marked the end of their happiness and their youth. They couldnot move to the city, for they had no private means, and the gifts ofthe poor congregation, a dwelling, wood and other donations, could notbe exchanged for money. And so they had to stay there quietly and seetheir lives wither.

The candidate of theology, Nathaniel Pogge, equipped with mightyrecommendations, came to deliver his trial sermon.

As he ascended the pulpit, long and frail, flat-chested and narrowshouldered, she saw him for the first time. His emaciated, freckledhand which held the hymn book, trembled with a kind of fever. But hisblue eyes shone with the fires of God. To be sure, his voice soundedhollow and hoarse, and often he had to struggle for breath in themiddle of a sentence. But what he said was wise and austere, and foundfavour in the eyes of his congregation.

His mother moved with him into the parsonage. She was a small, fussylady, energetic and very business-like, who complained of what shecalled previous mismanagement and seemed to avoid friendly relations.

But her son found his way to the widow's house for all that. He foundit oftener and oftener, and the only matter of uncertainty was as towhich of the four sisters had impressed him.

She would never have dreamed that his eye had fallen upon her, theyoungest. But a refusal was not to be thought of. It was rather herduty to kiss his hands in gratitude for taking her off her mother'sshoulders and liberating her from a hopeless situation. Certainly shewould not have grudged her happiness to one of her sisters; if itcould be called happiness to be subject to a suspicious mother-in-lawand the nurse of a valetudinarian. But she tried to think ithappiness. And, after all, there was the widow's house, to which onecould slip over to laugh or to weep one's fill, as the mood of thehour dictated. Either would have been frowned upon at home.

And of course she loved him.

Assuredly. How should she not have loved him? Had she not sworn to doso at the altar? And then his condition grew worse from day to day andneeded her love all the more.

It happened ever oftener that she had to get up at night to heat hismoss tea; and ever more breathlessly he cowered in the sacristy afterhis weekly sermon. And that lasted until the hemorrhage came, whichmade the trip south imperative.

Ah, and with what grave anxieties had this trip been undertaken! Asubstitute had to be procured. Their clothes and fares swallowed thesalary of many months. They had to pay fourteen francs board a day,not to speak of the extra expenses for brandy, milk, fires and drugs.Nor was this counting the physician who came daily. It was a desperatesituation.

But he recovered. At least it was unthinkable that he shouldn't. Whatobject else would these sacrifices have had?

He recovered. The sun and sea and air cured him; or, at least, herlove cured him. And this love, which Heaven had sent her as herhighest duty, surrounded him like a soft, warm garment, exquisitelyflexible to the movement of every limb, not hindering, but yielding tothe slightest impulse of movement; forming a protection against therough winds of the world, surer than a wall of stone or a cloakof fire.

The sun sank down toward the sea. His light assumed a yellow, metallichue, hard and wounding, before it changed and softened into violet andpurple shades. The group of pines on the beach seemed drenched in asulphurous light and the clarity of their outlines hurt the eye. Like a heavy and compact mass, ready to hurtle down, the foliage of thegardens bent over the crumbling walls. From the mountains came a gustywind that announced the approaching fall of night.

The sick man shivered. Mary was about to suggest their going home,when she perceived the form of a man that had intruded between her andthe sinking sun and that was surrounded by a yellow radiance. Sherecognised the dark gentleman.

A feeling of restlessness overcame her, but she could not turn hereyes from him. Always, when he was near, a strange presentiment cameto her--a dreamy knowledge of an unknown land. This impression variedin clearness. To-night she was fully conscious of it.

What she felt was difficult to put into words. She seemed almost to beafraid of him. And yet that was impossible, for what was he to her?She wasn't even interested in him. Surely not. His eyes, his violetfragrance, the flexible elegance of his movements--these things merelyaroused in her a faint curiosity. Strictly speaking, he wasn't even asympathetic personality, and had her sister Lizzie, who had a gift forsatire, been here, they would probably have made fun of him. Theanxious unquiet which he inspired must have some other source. Herein the south everything was so different--richer, more colourful, morevivid than at home. The sun, the sea, houses, flowers, faces--uponthem all lay more impassioned hues. Behind all that there must be asecret hitherto unrevealed to her.

She felt this secret everywhere. It lay in the heavy fragrance of thetrees, in the soft swinging of the palm leaves, in the multitudinousburgeoning and bloom about her. It lay in the long-drawn music of themen's voices, in the caressing laughter of the women. It lay in theflaming blushes that, even at table, mantled her face; in thedelicious languor that pervaded her limbs and seemed to creep into theinnermost marrow of her bones.

But this secret which she felt, scented and absorbed with every organof her being, but which was nowhere to be grasped, looked upon orrecognised--this secret was in some subtle way connected with the manwho stood there, irradiated, upon the edge of the cliff, and gazedupon the ancient tower which stood, unreal as a piece of stagescenery, upon the path.

Now he observed her.

For a moment it seemed as though he were about to approach to addressher. In his character of a neighbour at table he might well haveventured to do so. But the hasty gesture with which she turned toher sick husband forbade it.

"That would be the last inconvenience," Mary thought, "to makeacquaintances."

But as she was going home with her husband, she surprised herself inspeculation as to how she might have answered his words.

"That happens often," said the physician, a bony consumptive with themanners of a man of the world and an equipment in that inexpensivecourtesy which doctors are wont to assume in hopeless and poorlypaying cases.

To listen to him one would think that pulmonary consumption ended ininvariable improvement.

"And if something happens during the night?" Mary asked anxiously.

"Then just wait quietly until morning," the doctor said with the firmdecision of a man who doesn't like to have his sleep disturbed.

Nathaniel had to stay in bed and Mary was forced to request thewaiters to bring meals up to their room.

Thus passed several days, during which she scarcely left the sick-bedof her husband. And when she wasn't writing home, or reading to himfrom the hymn book, or cooking some easing draught upon the spiritlamp, she gazed dreamily out of the window.